


Mad Boy's Love Song

by CirrusGrey



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memory Loss, Reunions, implied/referenced character disappearance, not sure how to tag this but, now with an unexpected part two!, post-Watcher's Crown, trouble distinguishing dreams from reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-01-22 23:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18537253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CirrusGrey/pseuds/CirrusGrey
Summary: Long ago, there was a hand to hold. A smile to treasure, a name to whisper in the dark places of the night.Wasn't there?There was a ritual. There was a ritual, and the world changed.





	1. Eons

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath. The poem is also quoted/paraphrased throughout the story.

There was a time that was not this, wasn't there? There was a place that was not here. There was... someone.  
  
The Archivist stands on a balcony, overlooking a city of steel. People scream in the streets below, fleeing, fighting, falling, _known._ There is no escape from his gaze, as long as he stands here, watching.  
  
He closes his eyes.  
  
_I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead..._  
  
There _was_ someone. Familiar voice, smiling face, warmth somewhere next to him and in his chest.  
  
_I lift my lids and all is born again._  
  
The world is bright and sharp, secrets spilling in from every place the Archivist sees. It has always been this way, and always will be, an unchanging pool of beautiful, _powerful,_ fear.  
  
_(I think I made you up inside my head.)_  
  
Was it long ago? There is a voice that would recite poetry, lines tripping from a smiling tongue, words that echo through the silences in his head. It is a memory, or a dream of a memory; a memory of a dream.  
  
Night falls, and the city is dead beneath his feet. Those that he watches have gone to troubled dreams, but still they are not free of his gaze. The Archivist no longer needs to sleep to see the images that play out in their minds, horror and fear interlacing in an unending tapestry of misery.  
  
And yet... he slept, once. That, at least, is clear in his mind. Once, he needed sleep to feed his God, to pull every last piece of fear from the few dreams he had been gifted.  
  
Once, he needed a lot of things.  
  
_You sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane..._  
  
Someone had lain beside him, back then. The details have faded long since, but the Archivist remembers waking up to tangled hair and a crooked smile, to someone who would hold him through the dreams ~~(nightmares)~~ and whisper soft words into his ear to calm his shaking when he awoke (why had he shook? Had he been afraid? Surely not).  
  
Where had he gone?  
  
The memories are faded and grey, lost in a fog of time. There had been someone; there had been no one. Whoever it was had gone long before he stopped dreaming; perhaps he was a dream as well.  
  
He recalls a drifting: there, and then not there; his, and then gone. There had been something that needed doing, and the man with the smile that still lingers around the edges of the Archivist's soul had been the only one who could do it. After that there is only grey, and loss.  
  
He'd promised to come back, hadn't he? Or had the Archivist dreamt that as well?  
  
It is strange, he thinks, to doubt his own mind in this way. Still, there is no malice in the doubt, no malignant purpose behind the thoughts that intrude upon his mind. The fractals were banished long ago, along with everything else.  
  
Everything... but there had been a promise, breathless and desperate, that they would see each other again.  
  
_I fancied you'd return the way you said._  
  
And he _had_ promised to return; of that the Archivist is certain, though the circumstances of his leaving remain shrouded in pain and confusion.  
  
It's funny: he can't even remember the man's name anymore, though he's sure it was once the most important word in the world. It sits somewhere behind his thoughts, lingering on the tip of his tongue. He can almost taste it there, the familiar syllables weighing down his lungs with every breath - but it is gone.  
  
Strange, that he should know so much and not know this. His mind tells him the ignorance is a blessing; his heart screams it is the worst curse imaginable.  
  
But his heart does not get much say in matters, these days.  
  
It has been so long, if it ever was at all, and yet still there is a hole in his chest where the man is not. Whatever end they had was a dark one, of that the Archivist is sure; but then, was there any other way for things to end? Perhaps they were doomed from the start.  
  
_I should have loved another instead..._  
  
Had those been his words or the other's? Spoken as they were forced apart by forces beyond their control and entirely at the fault of their own choices. Or just lines whispered in the dead of night, with no meaning or bearing upon the fragments of memory that haunt the Archivist's every moment?  
  
_Like a ghost._  
  
He smiles, for some reason. Something about ghosts and poetry and a person by his side, something so buried by the haze of time that it is gone before he even has a chance to consider it.  
  
But he smiles, anyway, as the sun rises.  
  
It is... good, he thinks, that he cannot remember it all. Even the fragments he has are enough to distract him from his purpose, to pull his mind from the cold clarity he needs to fulfill his task. It is good that they should fade entirely. That he should let them do so, and stop fighting to maintain a vision that may not have ever been real.  
  
The Archivist looks over the stricken city, that voice - as familiar as his own heartbeat - echoing in his head one final time.  
  
_I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead..._  
  
He sighs, releasing the tattered shreds of that warm and peaceful dream to drift on the wind as he whispers his reply.  
  
"I think I made you up inside my head."


	2. Eternity

He finds his way back, eventually, slipping through the cracks between old loyalties and shattered alliances. He is changed by all that has occurred, altered in ways the Archivist cannot even guess at by his time spent lost. That does not stop him recognizing the man who appears in the falling twilight, nor does it deter him from pulling him into a close embrace. 

"Archivist," the man says, and it is wrong in its rightness.

"Wanderer," he replies, and it is right in its wrongness. 

They do not talk about all that has passed, and all that it means for who they have become. The man stands by his side as he watches, silent and still. The breeze plays with the curls of his hair, blowing it back from his face and dancing around both of them as they stand there.

There is a familiarity to the sight that the Archivist cannot place, a scene like this that is long gone. The man who stands beside him carries echoes of a world forgotten, stirring recollections of a place lost in the expanse of time that stretches behind them.

The Archivist's gaze carries weight, and the man turns to meet it.

"Archivist?" he says, and there is a hesitancy and a question in his voice. 

"Ghost," the Archivist replies, and it fills him with a sorrow and regret he can barely name.

Traces remain, scars of all those who sought to claim him; moments of distance and fingers skittering across a wall as he passes. The Archivist frowns to see it, something deep inside him recoiling and lashing out at the sight, fierce and possessive.

The man knows, and he smiles for it. Bows his head as he approaches the Archivist's seat, giving himself over completely in a way that is at one and the same time submissive and defiant. 

"Archivist," he says, and kneels on the hard ground before the throne.

"Devoted," he replies, and it is both a benediction and a curse as the word catches in his throat. 

He is not the same man that the Archivist lost so long ago; then again, the Archivist is no longer the man who lost him, either.

He no longer needs sleep, or food. He no longer needs to protect himself from the dangers of the world, or protect those around him. He no longer... needs. 

And yet, as the man leans softly into his shoulder - as he winds one arm around the Archivist's waist and sighs deeply, relaxing against him - something buried far beneath his conscious thoughts uncurls slightly, some unknown and eternal tension bleeding away as they stand together. 

He does not need this, he tells himself, and it is true. He could continue without this for the rest of time, if it were required of him. Still... it helps.

"Archivist," the man murmurs, sleepy and muffled against his shoulder. 

"Assistant?" he replies, questioning and soft. It is close, so close, but some subtle wrongness burns in his mind at the word.

It is later - much later - when the pieces fall into place, and their fractured history shifts into alignment once again.

The Archivist stands, as always, on the balcony over the screaming city, watching and being watched by the man beside him. The breeze dances around them as he reaches a hand out, brushing the curls back from that half-remembered face; the man smiles, and tilts his head to the side.

"I shut my eyes and all the world dropped dead," he says, and something falls into place in the Archivist's mind. Some small point of  _ rightness _ that has been missing since the man returned. 

He smiles, giving a response that is entirely expected and terribly, wonderfully, true. "I thought I made you up inside my head."

"Archivist." His voice is filled with warm fondness, and he reaches out to clasp the Archivist's free hand in one of his own.

"Poet," the Archivist replies, and it is truer and better than any title that has gone before. He pulls his poet into a kiss, there on the high balcony over that screaming city; and, just for a little while, the world falls away, leaving only two lost souls - separated across shattered centuries and broken worlds - who have finally,  _ finally, _ found each other.


End file.
